Jump to content

Japanese clans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of Japanese clans. The old clans (gōzoku) mentioned in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki lost their political power before the Heian period, during which new aristocracies and families, kuge, emerged in their place. After the Heian period, the samurai warrior clans gradually increased in importance and power until they came to dominate the country after the founding of the first shogunate.

Japan traditionally practiced cognatic primogeniture, or male-line inheritance in regard to passing down titles and estates. By allowing adult adoption, or for men to take their wife's name and be adopted into her family served as a means to pass down an estate to a family without any sons, Japan has managed to retain continuous family leadership for many of the below clans, the royal family, and even ordinary family businesses.[1][2]

The ability for Japanese families to track their lineage over successive generations plays a far more imporant role than simply having the same name as another family, as many commoners did not use a family name prior to the Meiji Restoration, and many simply adopted (名字, myōji) the name of the lord of their village, or the name of their domain, and may not necessarily have been a retainer to the clan. Other clan names are based on common geographic features or other arbitrary words that having didn't necessarily indicate clan membership.[3]

Many families also adopted sons from other families or married their daughters into other families to cement ties with a larger kin group outside of those with the same name as the main family line, called keibatsu (閨閥, lit. bedroom clique), a clan or family relationship built around both blood and maternal relations. Tokugawa Ieyasu himself had adopted two dozen children of allies in addition to his 16 acknowledged children.[4]

The Meiji Restoration sought dismantle the clan structure, giving clan leaders titles of nobility to inspire loyalty to the emperor rather than individual clans. However those familial relationships built over multiple generations still maintained their ties, first as monbatsu, then with industrialization, evolved into the pre-war zaibatsu, which were formed by these same inter-clan relationships. With the abolishment of the kazoku in 1947, they reverted to their unofficial keibatsu, and elements of which can be seen today in political families such as the Satō–Kishi–Abe family, with family ties to Marquess Inoue Kaoru, Viscount Ōshima Yoshimasa, and pre-war Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, all descendants of lower ranking Chōshū samurai families who benefited from the clan's outsized influence in the Meiji era government, and effectively created their own new clan, despite the lack of official title.[1][5][6]

Ancient clan names

[edit]

There are ancient-era clan names called Uji-na (氏名) or Honsei (本姓).

Imperial Clan

[edit]
Mon of The Imperial House

Four noble clans

[edit]

Gempeitōkitsu (源平藤橘), 4 noble clans of Japan:

Mon of the Minamoto clan
Mon of the Taira clan
Mon of the Fujiwara clan
Mon of the Tachibana clan

Noble clans

[edit]

Aristocratic family names

[edit]

From the late ancient era onward, the family name (Myōji/苗字 or 名字) had been commonly used by samurai to denote their family line instead of the name of the ancient clan that the family line belongs to (uji-na/氏名 or honsei/本姓), which was used only in the official records in the Imperial court. Kuge families also had used their family name (Kamei/家名) for the same purpose. Each of samurai families is called "[family name] clan (氏)" as follows and they must not be confused with ancient clan names. The list below is a list of various aristocratic families whose families served as Shugo, Shugodai, Jitō, and Daimyo

Mon of the Akita clan
Mon of the Asano clan
Mon of the Hōjō clan
Mon of the Honda clan
Mon of the (Mino) Ikeda clan
Mon of the Itō clan
Mon of the Maeda clan
Banner with the Mon of the Matsumae clan
Mon of the Mori clan (森氏)
Mon of the Takeda clan
Mon of the Toki clan
Mon 'Mitsuboshi ni ichimonji' of the Watanabe clan

Zaibatsu

[edit]

Zaibatsu were the industrial and financial vertically integrated business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II.

Sacerdotal clans

[edit]

Ryukyu

[edit]

Ryukyuan people are not Yamato people, but the Ryukyu Islands have been part of Japan since 1879.

Mon of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Ryukyuan dynasties:

Toraijin (渡来人)

[edit]
Main article: Toraijin

Toraijin is used to describe migrants in many contexts, from the original migration of a Yamato peoples to more recent migrants. According to the book Shinsen Shōjiroku compiled in 815, a total 326 out of 1,182 families in the Kinai area on Honshū were regarded as people with foreign genealogy. The book specifically mentions mentions 163 were from China, such families from Baekje, 41 from Goguryeo, 9 from Silla, and 9 from Gaya. These families are considered notable, although not inherently noble.[10][11]

Baekje

[edit]

Goguryeo

[edit]

Silla

[edit]

Gaya

[edit]
  • Arara clan (荒荒氏)
  • Hirata clan (辟田氏) – descended from Tsunugaarashito (都怒我阿羅斯等), a prince of Gaya.
  • Karabito clan (韓人氏)
  • Michita clan (道田氏)
  • Ōchi clan (大市氏) – descended from Tsunugaarashito (都怒我阿羅斯等), a prince of Gaya.
  • Tatara clan (多多良氏) – descended from Tsunugaarashito (都怒我阿羅斯等), a prince of Gaya.
  • Toyotsu clan (豊津氏)

China

[edit]

See also

[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Japanese clans.

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Moore, Ray A. (May 1970). "Adoption and Samurai Mobility in Tokugawa Japan". The Journal of Asian Studies. 29 (3): 617–632. doi:10.2307/2943247. JSTOR 2943247.
  2. ^ Saito, Osamu (2000). "Marriage, family labour and the stem family household: traditional Japan in a comparative perspective" (PDF). Continuity and Change. 15 (1): 17–45. doi:10.1017/s026841609900346x. hdl:10086/13400. S2CID 55491127.
  3. ^ "市史編さんこぼれ話No.１８ 「近世の百姓に苗字はあったのか」｜東京都小平市公式ホームページ". www.city.kodaira.tokyo.jp.
  4. ^ Sato, Tomoyasu (1987). 門閥―旧華族階層の復権. Rippū Shobō. ISBN 978-4651700328.
  5. ^ Yamada, Eizō; 山田栄三 (1988). Seiden Satō Eisaku. Shinchōsha. p. 23. ISBN 4-10-370701-1. OCLC 20260847.
  6. ^ "'Nepobabies' strive to keep dynasties going in Yamaguchi". Asahi Shimbun. 6 April 2023.
  7. ^ Nelson, John K. (2000). Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan, pp. 67–69.
  8. ^ Cranston, Edwin A. (1998). A Waka Anthology, p. 513.
  9. ^ Grapard, Allan G. (1992). The protocol of the gods, p. 42.
  10. ^ Saeki, Arikiyo (1981). Shinsen Shōjiroku no Kenkyū (Honbun hen) (in Japanese). Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. ISBN 4-642-02109-4.
  11. ^ "渡来人と赤穂". The KANSAI Guide - The Origin of Japan, KANSAI (in Japanese). Retrieved 2022-09-14.

References

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Japanese_clans&oldid=1274184060"